UKRI publishes progress report on Connecting Capability Fund Programme

UKRI has just published its mid-programme review of all projects funded by its Connecting Capability Fund (CCF) Programme, including Grow MedTech, to inform the case for the continued funding.


About the CCF programme

The CCF Programme is a £100 million Government-funded initiative to encourage collaboration between universities in their research commercialisation activities. The programme has funded 18 innovative projects, each involving at least three Higher Education Institutions (HEIs) in England, and is administered by Research England (RE).

At the core of all the projects are schemes aimed at increasing the commercial readiness of HEI or industry ideas. The eventual aim is to produce successful products or services which are available in the marketplace and/or to spin-out successful companies, but this may only occur after the end of the projects.

More broadly, the goals of the CCF programme are to strengthen the contribution of English HEIs to productivity and economic growth, and to deliver on the objectives of the Government’s Industrial Strategy by supporting the effective use of the university knowledge base to deliver commercial and business applications and wider applications for the economy and society.

Report findings

The report found strong support across the board for a continuation of the CCF programme, and concluded that there are already positive benefits coming from the scheme with more expected to come.

The report goes on to state that further value could also be gained by extending the scheme to some other HEIs that are not yet participants, through funding new schemes and/or through supporting some of the existing schemes to expand their membership.

To read the full report, which can be downloaded for offline review, click here.